adventures in the kin trade

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Edmond

SH76 Trio was built by Robert SKELTON in Scarborough in 1859. Her first owners were three of the TINDALL family, Alexander, William and James; shipbuilder, sailmaker, and banker respectively. The last change of ownership noted by Captain Syd was in 1881, four Scarborough fishermen, Robert ALLEN senior & junior, James and John ALLEN, took possession. At some point thereafter Thomas Avery JOHNSON became skipper and he was aboard with two of his sons in 1895 when a gale blew up in the North Sea, off Spurn Point. The crew on a passing Hull boat saw three of Trio’s fishermen washed overboard by a huge wave but could do nothing to effect a rescue.

The six men on board Trio were all from Filey and a pall fell over the town when news of her difficulties was received.

British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials (The National Archives) gives 14 May as the date of the men’s demise. Five are remembered on headstones in St Oswald’s churchyard. Two are recorded as having been lost in the gale of 16 and 17 May, and the three JOHNSONs as having drowned on the 16th.

‘Matty Wiggy’ CAPPLEMAN played for the Filey Red Stars FC and was photographed with the team in 1891 when he was 18-years-old. The insurance money from the benefit clubs was supplemented by local fund-raising events. The following was noted in The Scarborough Mercury on Friday 30th August 1895.

Dr. Spark, the Leeds City Organist, gave a very charming recital at Filey Church on Monday for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the fishermen lost in the Trio. The collection realized between £5 and £6. The programme was com­posed of some of the choicest illustrations of the gems of Silas, Tours, Mendelssohn, and Gounod, and Dr. Spark gave two or three of his own com­positions, which were very much appreciated. “The Vesper Hymn” and the finale introducing national themes by Purcell, Arne, and Dr. Bull afforded the veteran musician an opportunity of showing his wonderful skill as an executant and of displaying the passion and dramatic instinct which have always characterized his playing.

There were only two of the lost six on FamilySearch Tree when I looked a few days ago and in the process of gathering in the others I ran into some difficulties. I had hoped to point you to more complete pedigrees!

Robert EDMOND was the member of the crew without a remembrance in the churchyard – and he isn’t represented yet on FST. Find him on Filey Genealogy & Connections.

Dr. SPARK, a Devon man, makes a couple of appearances on FST – but as an only child without a mother. At the 1881 Census, he was living in Eccleshill, Bradford, with wife Elizabeth and son Thomas, age 23 and a law student. William Spark died in Leeds less than two years after his Filey recital.

[S. S.] Wesley’s articled pupil from his Exeter days, William Spark (1823-97) went with him to Leeds where he became Organist of St. George’s and then, after designing the Town Hall organ, Borough Organist from 1859 to 1897. His brother Frederick was a guiding light of the Leeds Triennial Festival and William played at each Festival between 1874 and 1886. Grove’s Dictionary dismisses his compositions as “numerous but unimportant”. Unimportant or not, they were nevertheless widely performed. His oratorio Immanuel figured in the Leeds Festival of 1877 and Spark’s recitals in and around Doncaster in the 1870s and 1880s (he appeared in the town as early as February 1853, conducting thirty voices of his own Leeds Madrigal and Motet Society) included his Concertstuck, a Fantasie and (several times) Variations andFugue on Jerusalem the Golden, also solo songs and excerpts from Immanuel. Spark’s Yorkshire Exhibition March was written in 1875 for the grand organ in the Exhibition building. He wrote and lectured tirelessly, his lecture subjects in Doncaster at that same period including “The Vocal Music of the Victorian Era“, “The Minstrelsy of Old England“, “National Ballad Music of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales” and “Glees and Partsongs“, the illustrations for the latter talk including at least one of his own compositions. He edited books of music by others for organists to play.

Francis CHEW (or CHOW) was named after the father he never met. Francis Senior and his brother were drowned in January 1808.

There is a verse inscribed on the stone that has long been covered by an accumulation of soil. When the Crimlisks did their survey of the monuments in 1978 they relied on George Shaw’s Rambles Round Filey, 1886, to quote it in full (and kindly gave him a credit).

G73

Sacred to the Memory of FRANCIS & JAMES CHOW who were drowned Jan·y 14th 1808, the former aged 30, the latter 24 years.

‘Most epitaphs are vainly wrote;

The dead to speak it can’t be thought;

Therefore, the friends of those here laid,

Desired that this might be said.

That rose two brothers, sad to tell,

That rose in health, ere night they fell –

Fell victims to the foaming main;

Wherefore awhile they hid remain.

Friends for them sought, and much lament,

At last the Lord to those them sent.

So child and widow they bemoan

O’er husband’s and o’er father’s tomb.’

Young Francis had an older brother but it would appear from the singular child of the verse that he had died before the father.

I made a start today on putting the CHEWs on FST and if you click the link you will notice the curious appearance of two women called Mary EDMOND who would become the grandmothers of John Francis CHEW.

The two Marys are not related by blood but one of them, the wife of John JENKINSON, was the niece of Ann EDMOND who featured in a post a few days ago.

Young Francis married Mary JENKINSON, the daughter of John and Mary Edmond II, on Christmas Eve 1832. Nine years on, to the day, this Francis was lost at sea. There are records of three children – Mary Ann who didn’t quite make it to her fortieth year, Elizabeth who died aged about three and John Francis who fell nine years short of his natural span.

Their mother, though, kept going through her long widowhood and saw in the 20th century.

She was only 26 when her husband died so it is perhaps surprising she didn’t marry again. In 1861 she was housekeeper to her father who was giving shelter to a couple of his grandchildren. John was still around in 1871, giving his age as 83, still cared for by daughter Mary. His granddaughter Elizabeth JENKINSON was with them, busy making dresses.

John died a year later and so did Mary’s daughter Mary Ann. At the 1881 Census, Mary was caring for her three HANSON grandchildren, aged 18, 15 and 12. Ten years later the King Street cottage was occupied by just Mary, now 76, and Frank Hanson, a 27-year-old Joiner who would marry Mary Jane COWLING that summer.

In 1881 Mary had kept a shop to support her young family and she possibly kept it going through her seventies. She was obviously made of stern stuff. Hail Mary!